November 11, 2014

Do you ever wonder how your beautiful pups can stand to put some of the grossest things in their mouths?? This lovely girl is up for adoption at Helen Woodward Animal Center where I volunteer each week. There were plenty of nice, clean tennis balls to play with, but of course she wanted to play with the icky, muddy one! (Thank you to the genius who invented the ChuckIt! I never had to actually touch the thing!)

January 14, 2014

The shelter where I volunteer, Helen Woodward Animal Center, has a pretty good turnover rate for the dogs. But, once in a while, we'll get a dog or two that are there for months on end. I know those dogs gets lots of good care and loving from the staff and all of us volunteers... but still... it would be nice if someone would take a chance on them. So today, for Blog the Change for Animals, in honor of one of the dogs that's been at Helen Woodward for a while now, Lilo, -- as well as all the shelter pups out there -- I present: "Take a Chance on Me," with lyrics appropriate for a pup waiting for their furever buddy, set to the tune of Abba's classic hit:

March 4, 2013

I posted before about how "helpful" Rita is with projects around the house. This past week was no different, when I was doing some spring cleaning on our patio chairs. I laid the chair cushions out in a row so I could give them a quick scrubbing, and guess who immediately popped over to "help":

November 23, 2012

No, I'm not writing about Rita after she comes home from the beach (although I could probably enter a sand castle competition with the amount of sand she brings home from Fiesta Island). Instead, I'm talking about Hurricane Sandy. Helen Woodward Animal Center (where I volunteer) got 45 cats
and dogs this past weekend from shelters affected by Hurricane Sandy. Forty-five!

You can read more about it
here, but basically each of the pets that arrived was already up for adoption before the storm hit. However, there were so many displaced pets after the storm, that the shelters didn't have room for the adoptable dogs/cats anymore and needed help.

HWAC, Southwest Airlines, SeaWorld, Delaware County SPCA and Save-a-Pet all worked together to fly the dogs and cats out to San Diego. Here's a super-sweet little video:

If
this video doesn't warm the cockles of your heart, then your cockles
need some serious thawing. I'd suggest putting them in the microwave on
auto-defrost and just leave them in there for as long as it takes.

A lot of the pups
weren't ready to be adopted yet when I was there on Monday for my usual
shift, so I didn't meet any of the dogs in the video but I did meet some other real sweethearts!

In
other Helen Woodward-related news, remember the other day when I posted this picture of the
gorgeous but somewhat, um, crazed looking pup that I was in love with...

...well,
when I went up on Monday, he was already gone! Hopefully he's being
spoiled rotten in his new furever home even as you read this. Hopefully all the "Sandy" dogs and cats will soon find their furever homes as well.

A Special Shout-out for Tripawd Warrior Princesses
The day after Thanksgiving will probably always make me think of our beautiful Abby. We brought her home from HWAC on 11/27/09, the day after Thanksgiving. We are very thankful that we got to have that special girl in our lives, even if for way too short of a time.

Sadly, this week, the last of the original Tripawd Warrior Princesses that I dedicated the drawing below to earned her wings.

Tripawd Warrior Princesses: Rio, Isabelle and Abby

I like to think our special girls are all together now, with their capes and their wings. Goodbye sweet Isabelle. You were truly an inspiration, surviving Hurricane Katrina and two kinds of cancer. Run pain free and say hi to my Abby!

November 13, 2012

Dr V. (not our Dr. V, whom you might remember from Abby's oncology visits, but a different Dr. V.) of www.pawcurious.com has teamed up with BlogPaws and the folks at Iams (with their annual "Home 4 the Holidays" campaign) to highlight National Animal Shelter Appreciation Week.

Dr. V. asked that bloggers do a "drive-by" of a local Home 4 The Holidays shelter or rescue and drop off a donation. She said it could be something "as simple as
bringing them an old towel from your closet or as complicated as you
wish. I like simple. Simple is good and repeatable and easy and is what I
will be doing."

So, I did something simple. I gathered up a small bag of some sheets and towels we no longer needed. I also checked Helen Woodward Animal Center's "wish list" page. If you've been reading the blog for a while, you know I volunteer at HWAC. They actually started the Home 4 the Holidays campaign. In fact, a certain little girl we know and love was adopted during that campaign:

How could we resist bringing this face home with us?? (Miss that girl...)

September 21, 2012

Have you heard of the popular Dog Shaming site? If you are not familiar with this phenomenon, there's a pretty funny video/report about it from CNN here. (Of course, given the opening lines of What the Dog Ate, wherein the main character, Maggie, finds out her dog has eaten her hubby's mistress's panties, this sentence from the report was the one that really caught my eye: "...underwear eating seems to be one of the most common misbehaviors.")

Anyway, the folks at Kol's Notes and My Brown Newfies thought it would be fun to let the dogs have a turn shaming their humans, so they declared today:

For my part, I thought I'd bring attention to dog adoption issues by writing about the Helen Woodward Animal Center where I've been volunteering for about 6 or 7 years now. At the end of the post, I'll also list some ways you can help too! There's even a super easy-peasy one!